


Out of all the Gin Joints

by hooksandheroics



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, meet cute, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 04:13:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7299097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hooksandheroics/pseuds/hooksandheroics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fate has really been amazing to Bellamy lately. Out of all the gin joints, he meets Clarke in a little eatery in his hometown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of all the Gin Joints

**Author's Note:**

> They're in Batangas, for all yall who're wondering. Which is a really great place. It's my favorite place.

He honestly doesn’t expect fate to be this amazing to him.

Rain in the summer in the Philippines is the kind of blessing that people in the smaller, more rural parts enjoy thoroughly. Children run out into the streets and bathe in it, farmers look out of their huts and smile at it. Bellamy, on the other hand, enjoys it in the comfort of his aunt Celia’s little _karinderya_.

It’s the kind of downpour that turns the dirt road into mud, making it hard to travel anywhere for a couple of days. But he has nowhere to be anyway. Nobody in their right minds would try to travel in this unforgiving weather -- which is why he’s properly amazed to see a blonde head duck into the _karinderya_ during his second cup of coffee.

First of all, that’s a foreigner. Second of all, he knows her. Which is the most bizarre thing ever.

He works in a library in New York, his job doesn’t really demand a lot of customer interaction. Mostly just reaching books up the top shelves or old ladies having troubles with the computerized system.

But this woman, she comes in every Tuesday afternoon and Thursday morning to check out a few fictions. She usually scrambles towards the desk after a couple of hours, pulls her earbuds out of her ears and pockets them, and gives him her books. Sometimes she smiles at him, sometimes he asks how her day has been. Most of the times, they don’t acknowledge each other. Which is fine.

He mostly just notices her because she’s always kind of really pretty.

So naturally, he immediately recognizes her.

She stands just below the awning of the shabby little establishment, shaking rain out of her hair and her small umbrella. She drops her backpack on the table nearest the opening.

His auntie’s eatery doesn’t have a door, just a big-ass hole in front that she calls the entrance. Which, fair enough. The space is open and a little narrow, but since it’s probably a little after ten in the morning and it’s raining pretty hard, the eatery is deserted. Except of course for him, the woman, and his little cousins finishing their porridge off at the corner. His auntie’s in the back preparing for lunch hour.

She turns around and it takes about five seconds for her to recognize him. And then she smiles, grabs her pack, approaches him, and god, he didn’t even know he had a crush on her until now.

“Hi!” she says and he stands. “The library, right?”

There’s confusion in her eyes, probably the same one in his. Out of all the gin joints. “Yeah, Tuesdays and Thursdays, right?”

He doesn’t mean to be this creepy. He’s usually really decent. But that seems to get a grin out of her, so a reluctant point to his amusing creepiness.

“Yeah. You... you live here? Or...” for her part, she seems adamant on getting the question right, so he takes it out of her hands.

“My auntie does,” he replies, gesturing for her to sit at his table. “I go back here every year and visit her and my young cousins.” He points at the corner table where the two little girls are obviously talking about them. Bellamy grins at them and shakes his head. “And you’re – uh. On vacation?”

She nods. “Raven – uh, my best friend – she says it’s a good way to reassemble my life after a stressful semester.”

He can’t help it, he grins. She looks exhausted, haggard probably from the sudden change in weather, but she’s still adorable. “She’s not wrong.”

She laughs and takes the seat across from him. He’s glad because he definitely wants her to do that. “She never is.”

She fishes a towel out of her bag and starts drying herself. “I’m sorry, I’m being rude,” she says. “My name’s Clarke Griffin.”

“Uh, Bellamy. Blake.”

“I know.” And when he sends her an amused look, she ducks her head. She actually flushes and it’s cute. “You have that little card on the front door. ‘Your librarian for today is Bellamy’. It’s adorable. With the rainbows and all.”

Bellamy groans. “So Jasper still does that, huh.”

“Don’t worry, it’s been a source of amusement ever since I started going to the library -- oh, hi. Good morning,” she says to someone behind him.

Bellamy turns and sees one of his cousins, Ella, standing next to him with an expression that means something along the lines of mischief. “ _Kuya, girlfriend mo_?” Ella says, and grins up at him.

“No,” he says, and then to Clarke, “this is my cousin, Ella. Ella, this is my friend from New York, Clarke. Don’t be rude, say hi to her.”

To his relief, the little girl waves and says hi. “Hi, my name is Ella. I’m seven years old. I have three chickens.”

Clarke laughs, surprised. “Hi, Ella. My name’s Clarke, I don’t have chickens. But I do have a cat at home.”

“ _Pusa_?” Ella exclaims excitedly to Bellamy.

“Yeah,” he replies, nodding at her. “They’re not allowed to have house pets here, both of the girls are allergic to them,” he adds to Clarke. He turns again to Ella. “Where’s your _ate_?”

“ _Sa likod, tinawag si mama. Sabi namin may girlfriend ka na._ ”

He groans again.

Bellamy loves his family, he really does. But if there’s one thing he can probably live without, it’s their meddling.

“ _Ah, Bellamy._ ”

True enough, there’s aunt Celia behind him, wiping her hands on her apron and looking at both of them with the kind of grin that means there’s a lot of explaining to do. Sandy, the older of the two sisters, is behind their mom, wiggling her eyebrows at him. The little shit.

“Clarke, this is my aunt, aunt Celia,” he says. “Auntie, this is Clarke. A _friend_.”

“That is a girl,” his auntie adds to Bellamy with a wink, and he wants to bang his head on the table. “Nice to meet you, Clarke. You’re very _maganda_. Very beautiful.”

To Bellamy’s amusement, Clarke actually blushes and smiles. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“Oh please,” auntie Celia says, waving a hand at her. “Call me auntie. Everybody here calls me auntie. Even the ones not my relatives.”

Clarke nods and raises her brows at Bellamy. He shoots her back with an apologetic look. He can already feel the inquisitive questions.

“Hoy, _ala eh Butchoy, ipaghanda mo naman dine ng makakain ang magandang dilag,”_ his auntie says, and of course. She slaps him upside the head.

“ _Okay po, auntie,_ ” he says. “My auntie thinks I’m being rude to you, so excuse me.”

He disappears behind the counter and returns with all the breakfast food he can get. They sit and talk, and she teases him about the nickname.

“It’s what my cousins used to call me when they couldn’t pronounce my name,” he says, and then shakes his head at her when she refused to let it go.

“What, it’s cute!”

He rolls his eyes but he can’t help his smile. “Sure it is.”

Thankfully, nobody bothered them all throughout the meal. The bad news is that the rain hasn’t let up yet. So when he deposits the dishes to the kitchen, his auntie grabs him by the arm and says, “You should ask her to stay. _Dalawang araw pa daw ‘tong bagyo.”_

Which, that seems like the best possible way. The storm’s not going to let up for at least another day, and the roads wouldn’t be accessible for a little bit longer than that. So he brings it up to Clarke when he gets back front.

“Okay,” she says, and he must look so surprised. “I mean, I actually have nowhere else to go. I was supposed to go home tomorrow anyway, but the storm’s worse than I expected. And, uh – you wouldn’t mind, would you?”

He shakes his head maybe a little too eagerly. “No, I just – my family, they’re a bit meddlesome.”

Clarke laughs. “I don’t mind. It’s honestly really cute.”

*

He should have known that it’d cost him his sanity to spend a day and a half with Clarke because she’s not only really cute, but also really attractive. And really adorable with his cousins.

Not to mention that when she smiles at him as Ella talks her ear off about her chickens, his freaking heart skips a beat and he can’t help but return it.

They got through dinner unscathed, which is good. But he can’t help but feel like this is the calm before the storm. Aunt Celia insisted that she sleep in the girls’ room, gave her hospitality that can rival five-star hotels, and made Bellamy make sure she’s comfortable, sending him really unsubtle winks.

“I’m sorry about my auntie,” he told her when the older woman has left the room. “She has never really seen me with another person before and – you know, not like you’re uh. We’re not – you’re just something new.”

She chuckled and sat on the bed. It gave no bounce at all, made out of really old mattresses and rocks, probably. But she seemed unbothered. “I don’t mind. She’s really awesome, you know?”

“Sometimes, I guess.”

“Bellamy,” she says, and he looks at her. She’s smiling, sleepy and tired. “Thank you.”

“No problem. Good night.” He leaves and tucks his cousins for bed instead of dwelling on the fluttery feelings in his chest.

Bellamy also discovers that she looks really good in the morning, all disheveled and sleepy, which is also not good for his sanity. And she’s really good with his cousins. They can be really nosy and inquisitive especially about the US, but Clarke’s really patient with their questions about Obama and American chickens.

The eatery is closed on Sundays and they’re lounging in the living room watching the early morning cartoons when Ella perks up from Clarke’s lap.

“We’re going to run under the rain, you want to come with us, Clarke?”

Bellamy stands from where he’s reading near the window. “You don’t have to.”

The rain is fine, actually. But these kids are the worst to babysit when they’re outside the house, and just imagining Clarke outside with them, running under the downpour, shirt clinging to her skin, hair in disarray – yeah. No.

“Yeah, you should come with us!” Sandy yells from the kitchen, mouth full of bread.

Clarke just laughs and looks at him with pleading eyes. “Please.”

And god, he’s a sucker for those, as he has recently discovered.

Which is bad for his health, really. It has always been real bad with his cousins because they can get away with anything, which is why he’s running after them under the rain with his shirt flung over the fence drying with mud. Clarke is laughing under the awning of the eatery, also drenched, and tapped out of the game. He’s fallen on his ass a grand total of five times now and the girls are probably winning, but damn if he’s not going to make them pay for their nosiness.

That’s how aunt Celia finds them later in the afternoon. She just came back from the marketplace, giant umbrella balanced on her shoulder. “ _Ala eh, Butchoy, ano ‘to?_ ”

He gets up from the muddy ground and helps his cousins up. “They started it!”

“ _Ay, isip bata lang?_ Have you no shame?” his aunt says, pointing at Clarke. But she’s smiling so she’s not mad. And Clarke’s hiding her giggles behind her palm, looking at him like an unrepentant delinquent. This is her fault, really. “Well? You two, _halika na kayo_ ,” she tells the kids, leading them inside and leaving both Bellamy and Clarke alone, but not without a wink at his direction.

She must have not caught it because she says “You’re the biggest kid in this part of town,” as he sits down next to her on the bamboo bench. “’They started it’? Seriously?”

“They did!” he replies and then she’s giggling into his shoulder. “You and those girls. You’ll be the death of me.”

“Oh come on.” She turns her head to look up at him as best as she can, and pats his cheek with one wet hand. “Don’t be overdramatic.”

“Shut up.” He’s laughing and he’s cold, and her hand is pruney on his cheek and he wants to stay like this as long as possible.

The rain quiets down to a drizzle, but she hasn’t moved away from him yet. So that’s a good sign.

“You seem really close to your cousins,” she says after a minute.

“They’re the only family I have left now,” he replies. She lifts her head and faces him, confused. “When my mom died, I had my little sister for a little while, but she’s gone to do some other things.” He tries to shrug and make it seem like he doesn’t care. And he doesn’t. Probably. But she grips his wrist and smiles at him, something familiar in her eyes. “Octavia, my sister, and I don’t have the same dads. Mine was a good man, a decent father. Before he died when I was five, he told me if I wanted, I can come home to the Philippines. I will always have a family waiting for me here.”

He smiles at the ground. “And I do. They feel like the only family that will never leave.”

“That’s good,” she says, nodding. “You deserve that. You’re a good person, Bellamy.”

“She says, under absolutely no basis whatsoever.”

“Shut up and just take the compliment.”

There’s another bout of silence, and the drizzle dies down and makes way for the bright afternoon sun to shine. She’s still so close, their arms are still touching, and he very much wants to kiss her right then, but he knows his auntie has a special kind of intuition for these things. And besides, she may just be _this_ affectionate.

But then –

“Will your aunt find it scandalous if she sees me kissing you?”

“What?” And then he gathers his wits. “I mean, I don’t know. She’s been really obvious about her teasing. I – _I_ wouldn’t mind.”

She chuckles. “Okay,” she says, and then leans in.

She tastes like rain and her lips are cold, but her tongue is warm against his lips, begging for him to open. And he does, threading his fingers through her tangled hair. She makes this little noise into his mouth and he feels warmth spread under his skin. God, she’s perfect.

She pulls away and he chases her, but she puts a hand on his chest.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, but she’s smiling.

“No I just – I’m thinking about getting coffee when we’re back in New York.”

“Oh. Yeah, sure.”

*

Turns out, they couldn’t wait. Aunt Celia sets down two steaming mugs of coffee in front of them at the tables of the deserted eatery.

“I heard about some people wanting to get coffee,” she says as she retreats to the back, but not without another wink.

Bellamy drops his forehead on the table, and Clarke laughs. But hey, they got their coffee.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> I loved writing this so much.


End file.
